In 2016, there were an estimated 40.3 million victims of modern slavery in the world, more than were enslaved during the Transatlantic Slave Trade. Since the adoption of the 2000 UN Trafficking Protocol, numerous efforts from inter-governmental agencies, governmental agencies, international non-governmental organizations (INGOs), and domestic non-governmental organizations (NGOs) have strived to combat the phenomena of human trafficking through legal-institutional means, direct interventions, and programs of support for those exploited. This anti-trafficking work has paid varying degrees of attention to the principles and methods of monitoring, evaluation, and impact assessment, but has often been subject to the end of project evaluations. Similar to findings of reviews of evaluations in the international development sector, evaluations of anti-trafficking programing have primarily focused on assessing the progress of project implementation and the achievement of outputs, rather than tracking the achievement of outcomes or impact. This is further complicated by the hidden nature of human trafficking and the trauma experienced by human-trafficking victims. As a consequence, despite some evidence of raised awareness and increased levels of funding, organizations are still struggling to demonstrate impact and discern what works to combat human trafficking. This article analyses the evaluations of counter-trafficking programing produced since the Protocol to draw conclusions regarding the lessons learned from these interventions and the methods used to monitor and evaluate human-trafficking programs. By highlighting gaps, this article provides a series of suggestions on how to better track progress and impact toward the elimination of modern slavery.

Around the world more than 50 million people, many of them women, are domestic workers. Of these, a significant number are migrants, including migrants who are in an irregular situation. The work they do is invaluable. Among a myriad other tasks, domestic workers clean, iron clothes, cook, garden, provide home health care, drive, and take care of children and older persons. This is necessary work, but work that often goes unnoticed, particularly when it is undertaken by irregular migrants who work unseen behind closed doors. In fact, labour legislation in several countries does not even recognize domestic work and often excludes domestic workers from access to rights and protections that are enjoyed by other categories of workers. Domestic workers often lack access to rights, to justice and to protection both as women and as migrants, creating an environment that often leads to serious human rights abuse. The situation of migrant domestic workers in an irregular situation is even more vulnerable. They are disproportionately subjected to human rights abuse, violations which often occur inside homes, where those responsible are able to operate with impunity and where victims are unseen and unprotected. The pattern of human rights abuses is similar all over the world. Migrant domestic workers in an irregular situation face exploitative working conditions and discrimination, they lack access to basic economic, social and cultural rights and are exposed to sexual andgender-based violence. If they live in their workplace, they can be forcibly confined, lack privacy, be deprived of food and sleep, and are often prohibited from contacting their families and friends. In some countries they are subject to invasive medical tests and can be fired if they become pregnant. Very often, domestic workers are not permitted to marry. Moreover, if they flee abuse, they may be detained for lacking documents and may be denied access to social or health services or legal remedies. At risk of xenophobia and violence in the community as well as in the workplace, many may be afraid to report their suffering to the police or other authorities for fear of deportation.

The present paper aims to critically engage with the explanatory framework of demand as it is employed in various debates and to shed light on main demand-side arguments put forward in the context of various forms of trafficking in human beings. This paper delivers mainly a positive analysis, in the sense that it seeks to clarify ‘what is there’ – which arguments are used in which debates –, rather than to identify what action should be taken – which would subscribe to a normative analysis (Robert & Zeckhauser 2011). It is a stocktacking exercise of main demand-side arguments in debates on various types of trafficking in human beings. The paper critically engages with the normative side of demand-side arguments only in as much as this is required to reconstruct the arguments for a better understanding of policy measures proposed. The general argument identified in debates is that there is a demand that fosters exploitation related to trafficking in human beings. The paper aims to retrace the arguments used in debates on demand in particular areas of trafficking in human beings – for sexual exploitation, for labour exploitation, for the exploitation of begging, for illegal adoption, trafficking for forced and servile marriages and trafficking for the removal of organs – in order to better understand the assumptions behind demand-side arguments, the way demand is understood and contextualised and how it is considered relevant in addressing various types of trafficking in human beings. One of the main findings is that although ‘demand’ is mostly referred to in its economic understanding – the willingness and ability to purchase a good or a service – the way in which the notion of demand is being employed varies and is often inconsistent.

Labour inspectorates and other inspecting authorities with a mandate to monitor labour and employment standards (e.g. the financial police) have emerged as possible actors that can contribute to national efforts to combat trafficking. Today these authorities are expected to play a key role in tackling trafficking for labour exploitation (see, e.g., GRETA 2016) and in fact, in many countries, they have become involved in anti-trafficking efforts to implement international obligations. This policy brief summarises key findings of research conducted within the DemandAT project that examined the role of selected authorities mandated to monitor labour and employment standards in addressing trafficking in five EU Member States.

In the last decades, considerable efforts have been made to eradicate trafficking in human beings. In this context, the role of demand has gained prominence in public and political debates. Activists had lobbied for a reference to demand in the UN Anti-Trafficking Protocol, mainly with the aim to criminalise ‘the demand’ or purchase of sexual services. What was eventually agreed upon was something different and above all vague. Indeed, the Protocol asks signatory states to ‘discourage the demand that fosters all forms of exploitation of persons, especially women and children, that leads to trafficking’, as do the 2005 Council of Europe Convention on Action against Trafficking in Human Beings and the 2011 EU Anti-Trafficking Directive (2011/36/EU). This demand-clause triggered a search for meaningful interpretations in a range of fields. The project DemandAT had the task of mapping what was understood as demand-side measures, to suggest a consistent conceptual and theoretical framework for the analysis of demand-side and alternative policies, and to contribute to a better understanding of the working of selected ‘demand-side’ measures. This policy brief summarises main research results and formulates recommendations for European and national policy makers.

Human trafficking occurs in almost every country in the world, but it takes on particularly abhorrent dimensions during and after conflict. It is defined as the recruitment, transportation, transfer, harboring, or receipt of people through the threat or use of abduction, abuse of power or vulnerability, deception, coercion, fraud, force, or giving payments or benefits to a person in control of the victim for the purpose of exploitation. While many trafficking victims are exploited within their countries of residence, other victims are trafficked across regions More than 72 percent of detected victims are women and girls; Western and Central Europe and North America, Central America, and the Caribbean have particularly high rates of detected women and girls. Some forms of trafficking are particularly prevalent in the context of armed conflict, such as sexual exploitation, enslavement, and forced marriage; forced labor to support military operations; recruitment and exploitation of child soldiers; and removal of organs to treat injured fighters or finance operations.Traffickers also target forcibly displaced populations. On migration routes, human traffickers deceive people into fraudulent travel arrangements and job opportunities. Migrants face unique danger as they go through holding points and informal settlements or accept unsafe employment opportunities. Refugee women and girls are at particular risk of sex trafficking and forced marriage.

At the UN level, progress towards the SDGs is measured by a global indicator framework and Voluntary National Reviews, where governments report on their own activities against these indicators. This approach is hampered, however, by the lack of indicators on all forms of moden slavery under SDG 8.7, as well as the voluntary nature of this reporting. Without clear indicators to measure progress toward the 2030 goal, governments are not able to report systematically and consistently, nor can they be held to account. In the absence of official indicators, this report, Measurement, Action, Freedom, provides an independent assessment of 183 governments and their responses to the challenge of modern slavery. In it, governments are assessed against their ability to identify and support survivors, to establish effective criminal justice systems, to strengthen coordination mechanisms and be held to account, to address underlying risk factors, and to clean up government and business supply chains, all in order to eradicate modern slavery. The findings shine a light on those taking strong action, identify those that are lagging, and highlight the activities that should be prioritised.

While no government has a fully comprehensive response to modern slavery, all countries in the Europe and Central Asia region have either mantained or improved their response since the publication of the 2016 Global Slavery Index. Most notably, the Netherlands has retained its position as having the world's strongest response to modern slavery, taking the most steps of any nation to address the problem and, for the second consecutive time, being the only country anywhere to receive an "A" rating. The Netherlands national response is strong across indicators of victim support, criminal justice responses, and addressing risk, including society safety nets and protection for migrants, a feature missing in many countries of destination. Netherlands was closely followed by the United Kingdom, Belgium, Sweden, Croatia, Spain, Norway, and Portugal, all of which took significant action against modern slavery in the previous two years.

The economic, geographic, and cultural diversity of Asia and the Pacific region is reflected in the varying prevalence and forms of modern slavery found across the region. In Asia and the Pacific, there are instances of debt bondage, including hereditary forms of bonded labour in South Asia, forced labour exists in migrant dominated sectors across the region, forced marriage persists, and state-imposed forced labour, while most commonly known to exist in North Korea, occurs in several countries within the region. The Asia and Pacific region is home to the two most populous countries in the world, India and China, as well as some of the least populous island nations, among them Tuvalu, Nauru and Palau.

The Arab States are currently both the source and recipient of the largest numbers of refugees and internally displaced people globally. As the region experiences conflict and resulting displacement – and given its position at the junction of migratory paths for Afghans, Sudanese, and Somalis fleeing conflicts in their homelands – vulnerability to modern slavery in the Arab States has sharply increased. An estimated 5.7 million refugees originated in the region since mid-2016 and 12 million people were displaced internally in Middle Eastern countries.This displacement, accompanied by severe economic decline, widespread violence and psychological distress, collapse of essential public services in many districts, and weak labour laws has contributed towards the vulnerability of refugees, internally displaced persons, minority groups, and ordinary citizens to trafficking and exploitation.